Global Mobile Games in December | Squid Game New Release Tops the Chart, FGO Christmas Event Generates Huge Revenue!

SocialPeta sorted out the top 20 global mobile games by advertising, revenue, and downloads in December 2024, aiming to help professionals in the mobile app industry understand changes in the global mobile game market.

The overall performance of global mobile games in December highlighted three major trends:

• Leveraging the popularity of film and television, the official Squid Game mobile game became a major new release and generated millions of downloads during its launch month.
• Fate/Grand Order remained strong, with its Christmas event helping push cross-platform revenue above $30 million.
• Puzzle games explored new advertising approaches, with real-life one-line drawing creatives being used to capture attention during the critical opening seconds of an ad.

At first glance at the global mobile game advertising rankings, Chinese publishers continued to maintain a strong presence. Puzzle games increased their advertising efforts and outperformed several major SLG advertisers, led by experienced puzzle game publishers such as Matchingham Games and Oakever Games.

After updating its icon in January 2024, Braindom repeatedly returned to one-line drawing imagery. Several later icon updates mainly changed the line designs and character hair colors, suggesting that Matchingham Games was satisfied with the one-line visual concept.

Meanwhile, One Line: Drawing Puzzle Game took a more aggressive approach by combining four drawing puzzles into a single grid-style icon to emphasize the game's broad collection of simple puzzles.

One Line is a one-line drawing mobile game released by Kidding Box in April 2024. The game uses a realistic 3D visual style and offers accessible, family-friendly line-drawing puzzles.

According to SocialPeta, One Line accumulated approximately 13,000 deduplicated ad creatives across the App Store and Google Play in December. Its iOS advertising showed several notable characteristics:

• Video ads accounted for approximately 95.7% of creatives during the previous 30 days, with videos shorter than 30 seconds accounting for around 85%.
• Vertical 720 × 1280 was the most common video format, accounting for approximately 50.6%.
• Daily advertising volume began increasing at the end of November and reached peak levels on December 12 and December 31.
• English-language creatives accounted for approximately 12%, while Serbian, Arabic, and Spanish were also among the commonly used languages.
• The creatives frequently encouraged users to try the game through IQ tests, seemingly impossible challenges, and direct puzzle-solving prompts.

One Line used a recognizable advertising formula built around attention-grabbing live-action footage, a three-stage IQ progress indicator, and a prominent red failure mark.

The game's 3D gesture guides imitate real-world hand movements, while multiple ad creatives place line-drawing puzzles over live-action scenes. One example incorporates a bright red ketchup bottle and an exaggerated challenge-oriented voiceover to make the puzzle feel difficult and encourage viewers to try it themselves.

More mobile game advertising and real-life user acquisition creative examples can be explored through SocialPeta.

When Squid Game became a global hit in 2021, numerous hyper-casual games incorporated recognizable elements inspired by the series into their creatives. Netflix, despite owning the IP and expanding its presence in games, had not yet released an official Squid Game mobile game.

That changed with Squid Game: Unleashed. The official IP mobile game launched on December 17, 2024, shortly before the December 26 premiere of Squid Game Season 2.

According to SocialPeta, Squid Game: Unleashed began its pre-launch advertising campaign on November 19, 2024, accumulating approximately 1,800 pre-registration creatives. After the game launched on December 17, the total number of deduplicated creatives across the two platforms reached approximately 2,400 by the end of the month.

Its iOS advertising showed the following characteristics:

• Video ads represented approximately 64.8% of creatives in the previous 30 days, with videos longer than 30 seconds accounting for around 52%.
• Vertical 720 × 1280 was the most common video format, accounting for approximately 50%.
• Image advertising accounted for approximately 35% of creatives in the previous 30 days.
• Vertical 1080 × 1920 represented more than 46.9% of image creatives.

The video creatives primarily reused recognizable elements from the television series, dangerous in-game stages, gameplay footage, and exaggerated failure scenarios designed to encourage download conversions.

App Store Revenue Highlights

Pokémon TCG Pocket continued its strong performance, generating more than $94 million in App Store revenue during December. Players in the United States and Japan contributed a combined 50.7% of the game's revenue.

Veteran anime-style mobile game Fate/Grand Order benefited from its Christmas event and generated more than $17 million in App Store revenue during December, representing a 216.4% month-over-month increase. At the time of the original report, SocialPeta expected revenue to rise further following the launch of New Year bundles in January.

Google Play Revenue Highlights

Kakao Games' MMO mobile game 오딘: 발할라 라이징 generated more than $16 million in Google Play revenue during December, representing a 138.2% month-over-month increase.

Lemon Microfun's hybrid mobile game Gossip Harbor generated approximately $16 million in Google Play revenue, up approximately 44.5% month over month.

App Store Download Highlights

Block Blast! topped the App Store download ranking with more than 11 million downloads in December. Players in the United States accounted for 27.4% of its downloads.

Newly launched Squid Game: Unleashed recorded approximately 3.5 million App Store downloads during December, its first month on the market. Players in India contributed approximately 50.8% of its App Store downloads.

Google Play Download Highlights

Horror rhythm game Horror Spranky Beats recorded approximately 12 million Google Play downloads in December, with Brazilian players contributing approximately 17% of the total.

Mukbang simulation game Jelly Master: Mukbang ASMR surpassed 10 million Google Play downloads during the month. Indonesian players contributed approximately 23.8% of downloads.

These rankings summarize SocialPeta's observations of global mobile game launches, advertising activity, revenue, and download performance across the App Store and Google Play in December 2024.